


Reisen Adjacent

by Sunshowersy



Category: Ginga Tetsudou no Yoru | Night on the Galactic Railroad, Touhou Project
Genre: Backstory, Bystander Series, Drama, Embedded Images, Epistolary, Gen, Lower-Deck Episode, Slice of Life, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27226003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshowersy/pseuds/Sunshowersy
Summary: "Since she is not originally a creature of Earth, she cannot get along with humans very well. She can change her personality completely to match her circumstances." - Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View Official Profile for Reisen Udongein Inaba.A series of interrelated shorts about Reisen Udongein Inaba as seen through the eyes of the villagers who interact with her. Circa 2006-2010. Expect a more Lunatic, less earthy Reisen.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. The Morning Bamboo Vignette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reisen encounters a bamboo cutter.

######  _**Spring, Season 121/2006, recounted Spring, Season 121/2006.** _

Haru was entering his twenty-second year when his father received the strange request. His father, who had said that Haru would receive such requests by-and-by, was delighted and handed him the family _kakuri_. It was clear that the client had paid very well.

“Cut down all the trees marked in red. You’ll know them by their height. Start early and work fast.” His father’s instructions had been exact, as always. Haru set off before first light.

When he later recounted the tale to the girl from the Hieda household, Haru kept circling back to the morning’s oddities. It was only the last third of Yayoi, yet the morning was summer-warm. The moon had fallen too low, a haughty and august moon squinting barely aloft the trees. Under the lunar gaze, the path to the bamboo became queer with dancing shadows.

The bamboo grove swallowed Haru whole. In the crowding dark he navigated by the distant shapes of the tottering trees. His father had been right: the saplings were tall and unnatural. Although he later left this part out of his account, the sight of them had stirred a closing dread inside Haru’s chest, tight as the bamboo cage he had stepped into.

Despite his welling fear Haru gritted his teeth and began felling the bamboo. The sway and rhythm of the work calmed him, the handsaw sure and biting in his hands. The saplings were yielding and obedient, falling when they should: ten, twenty now. Haru had begun belting out the first lines of his work-song when he felt a thousand eyes stare at the nape of his neck.

Haru froze. This was a mistake, he later recalled, because the silence permitted him to hear a low burbling from all around. The voice was whispered and private, dim words blending into one another. Haru felt then the weight of his saw, the dead stillness of the trees, the aching in his joints. In the pale light of the falling moon Haru searched the grove for the owner of the voice. He had hoped, vainly, that it was human.

The lanky woman drifted into his vision with a careless and familiar gait, almost floating above the leaves. Her face was fixed on the moon like a compass, so that after each small lop she spun her body to face it again. Murmuring in a strange harsh language, the woman sauntered through the grove, making little barking laughs all the while. Haru then saw her ears, alert and beast-like, swiveling to-and-fro in a motion that reminded him of the crawling of insects. In an instinctive motion Haru found that he had drawn his handsaw, and was waving it in a vaguely defensive manner.

Haru swore then that the youkai’s eyes had lit up, and in an instant his vision was filled with their red glare. He saw the split-second shock on her face, her ears standing to attention before she disappeared. Later he would remember an inexplicable shame, as if he had trespassed upon some person’s boudoir. As if youkai had houses or rooms within them with secrets precious enough to keep.

Haru had trembled then, a full body shiver of odd emotion. He was unsure of what he had seen, what omens it entailed. He wondered if he had been threatened by the youkai, or whether (absurdly) he had threatened _it_. Haru had cut the saplings in silence but felt no satisfaction after the job. As soon as it was polite, he had gone to the Hieda household to report the incident. The young head of the household had nodded along to his tale, and then had served him very delicious tea.

In the nights that followed, odd darting dreams chased his sleep. When the traveling medicine-seller arrived, he had ordered her Butterfly Dream pills and taken them. Afterwards the dreams he had were pleasant and full, but upon waking he would hear a single word echoed in his ears:

“Rude.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I based this one off her Perfect Memento in Strict Sense entry. This is a prologue of sorts.
> 
> Haru interrupted Reisen's phonecall.
> 
> Autumn Reisen image done by Emilio Vargas. She's bundled up nice and good, so you should remember to do that also. You should check out Emilio's Patreon here! https://www.patreon.com/emiliovargas/


	2. Afternoon on the Galactic Railroad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reisen imparts visions on an ailing patient.

######  _Autumn, Season 123/2008, recounted Winter, Season 124/2008_

I, Orino Harukawa, confess that I am possessed of a strange and unhuman ability. During the spring of my twenty-fourth year, I suffered from sudden dizzy spells which had me confined to bed for a week. This was at the height of the silkworm season, you understand, and my father was much angered by this loss of hands. He cursed me then, I am sure. His words were, “if you won’t work, then your sleep will become work.” Ever since then, whenever I have closed my eyes I am beset by queer moving images, as if a quickly-flipping picture-book was forever opened up on their insides.

At first I supposed that the images were merely my fancies. Over time, however, I realized to my horror that they were _other people’s_ fancies. Through some curious Second Sight I saw what others around me saw with their mind’s eye. I confess that, being of my station, much of what I saw was neither pleasant nor edifying. The full panoply of human want was impressed upon me in the fields, every day, whenever I closed my eyes for refuge from the noonday sun. Still, I persist in my duties. I do not now seek pity, but understanding, about a curious and terrific incident which had occurred to me last season due to this very same ability.

I must tell you first about our family. We are humble tenant farmers who have paid our _koku_ of rice to the Hieda household since time immemorial. We have never withheld our grain even during the leanest years. We have never shirked the silk tax in our years of silkworm-rearing.

It thus shames me greatly, you understand, to say that my generation is struggling. The river burst its banks in the spring of last year and claimed several _tan_ of our fields, cutting into our already-modest yield. My father is ailing, my mother is old, and my sister and I have failed to find suitors even in our advanced ages. My sister is an especially sorrowful case: Tsuru is an exceedingly beautiful woman of eighteen, and yet she is not fully formed. It was as if the gods had left the clay of her creation unfinished. I relate this not for pity’s sake, but because she and her circumstances shaped the center of the incident.

You must understand that, above all, Tsuru means well. Through my Sight I perceived that she possessed a deep faith in fairies. Her mind’s eye was forever flying above the fields, following the flight of the spring fairy, dancing in circles above the silvery lake with those of the winter, and nesting inside their little homes in autumn. She was playing even when her mind, incomplete, failed to grasp the method to weed the fields. Tsuru would wander in a happy daze towards the river, for she had none of the reserve that others felt when approaching nature. She viewed the river as a welcoming place, when she should have not.

She took ill on the eve of the Harvest Festival. I confess that as the eldest sister, I should have trailed her as closely as a hawk trails its prey. However the whole family was busy with the harvest, and there were rumors that the Autumnal Sisters would visit our corner of Gensokyo, so we were kept busy by the offerings. I fear that it was a day before we noticed that, far from being her untroubled self, Tsuru had withdrawn and was laying in stupor.

When I found her that early afternoon, she was hot to the touch. Tsuru’s hair was askew with sweat, her eyes frantic with incomprehension. I hastened to loose her clothes and set a preparation of _Maoto_ to boil, all the while trying to talk to her. Tsuru likes the cadence of words, and I hoped that my voice would soothe her, but instead she let out labored gasps of pain. My father was away and my mother would not be back until dark. In that black instance I am ashamed to say that I fled the house. I had half a mind to look for the village doctor, but my thoughts were on leaving my sister, no matter that she was gasping on the floor.

In all honesty, I was tired and afraid and lost. I was trying to remember the amount of payment befitting for a doctor, but my mind was flurry with other people’s longings and boredom, greed and want. Although the village was close, I am not ashamed to say that I took the longest most meandering paths, sorry for my lot in life. I was afraid of losing my sister, but a small corner of my heart wished for her death, so that I would have one less Sight to see to. That cloud of emotion was to lead to my greatest mistake.

While stumbling through the rice fields, I saw the bobbing figure of the medicine-seller. I had heard the rumors, of course: that her medicine had strange unwanted effects, even that her face was foreign and inhuman. Our family had refused to take her medicine box when it was offered. Yet in that frame of hysteria I had shed all reason and only wanted another person to part the burden which I had been dragging. I rushed towards her then, babbling and imploring for her to do something about my sister.

I remember that the medicine-seller said a curious thing in assent. Her voice was soft:

“Yours are the shortest that I’ve seen yet. Please, lead me to your sister.”

I did not ponder those words at that time, but I later realized that they hinted at her true nature. I should not have led her to our home.

I would have liked to say that the rumors were true, that even her countenance was off-putting, or that her face was a caricature of a foreigner’s, but I am an honest person. Her face was oval and soft in the afternoon light. While it is true that she had a foreigner’s nose, and that her eyes were set deep and were larger than the norm, she was not uncanny-looking. Instead she had on an expression that I could immediately place. It said: I am worn and I would love to go home, but I have promised myself to do one more thing, and so I shall do it. I confess that it calmed me so to see such simple determination, although later events would serve to tarnish this impression.

When we arrived home, I tore through the house looking for my sister. The kitchen was a mess, the _Maoto_ preparation that I had left to boil had overflown. While I set about extinguishing the stove, the medicine-seller had ducked inside. I noticed that, even as she had set down her heavy-looking bag, she had insisted on keeping her straw hat. As if anticipating this, she had asked:

“I’m sorry for my impoliteness, but may I keep my hat on inside? It’s necessary for my work.” I had assented then, but I wonder if I should have been more demanding.

My sister lay in a sad heap in the living room, her _fudangi_ gown sullied with vomit and mucus. She made odd gurgling sounds. I recall with shame my absurd urge to prostrate before her, to apologize for my fleeting wish to have her die, but before I could do so the medicine-seller had rolled Tsuru on her stomach. The instant that she was moved, Tsuru burped and vomited over the medicine-seller’s coat. I flinched and closed my eyes, Seeing briefly Tsuru’s sweaty and nauseous fever-dream. The recoil was so affecting that it was a while before I noticed that the medicine-seller had been trying to talk to me.

“Miss, excuse me, miss? Would you mind going out of the room? The treatment requires a little space.” The medicine-seller’s face was a little more hesitant then, more unsure. I thought that my disquiet was getting to her, so I obediently agreed and excused myself outside.

That was when I noticed that I couldn’t See her. When I rubbed my eyes, I could only See the background roil of our neighbors and the skittering panic-deliriousness of my sister’s vision. She had no presence in my ability, as if she were an animal or a rock. This revelation unnerved me. Oh, how I should have listened and kept her away from my sister!

Before I could act, however, the medicine-seller exited the house. In a nervous, rushed tone she addressed me:

“Excuse me, miss, your sister’s in a bad state, I’m going to fetch some help, so please wait and try making sure your sister doesn’t vomit.”

After she had said this, the medicine-seller dashed towards the village, her medicine bag tottering. Now thoroughly unnerved, I had rushed to check on Tsuru.

Tsuru was awake and blinking, still lying prone, her arm cushioning her head. Her gown had been replaced by a warm-looking blanket that was wrapped around her torso. When I blinked I Saw myself through her eyes, and knew then that the medicine-seller had made her drink a calming medicine. Her mind’s eye was clear of her usual phantasies, but I could make out her subsurface delirium, as if her thoughts had been forced into a small cage and were threatening to burst out. Her placidness was uncanny - you must understand, Tsuru is not a calm person. I held onto her for a while, stroking her lush hair, trying to make her feel safe. Tsuru’s eyes fell to half-masts as her tattered breathing slowed. Her mind’s eye was filled with the sight of me. I took that as a good omen, and held onto it.

After an impossibly brief interval I heard a voice beckon from the door. The voice did not belong to the medicine-seller; this voice was deeper and older, but it affected politeness. Opening the door I was greeted by the sight of an imposing woman, towering in stature and dressed in a peculiar red-and-blue uniform. Her hair was a striking white, while her face was set in a placid expression that still radiated authority. Truth be told, my first reflex had told me to bow deeply before her, but the strange circumstances prevented me from doing so.

I am glad not to have done so, because I understand now that this woman is a master of strange magic and counted a youkai among her followers. Although authorities such as yourself have assured me that she is indeed human, in my judgement she is nevertheless so close to youkai as to be indistinguishable from them. I hope you will not begrudge such an opinion, coming as it does from the people who live beyond the borders of the village.

She and the medicine-seller had let themselves into the living room, although the medicine-seller performed an odd bow before doing so. Immediately, the medicine seller had set down her bag and went about moving the furniture, while the uniformed woman produced a series of glinting metal instruments out of the aforesaid bag. I presumed that this woman, clearly the senior, was the doctor. The woman then said to me:

“Miss Harukawa, would you be so kind as to wait outside the house? In any other circumstance I would not have dared to move you out of your own home, but this unfortunate happenstance demands otherwise. I assure you, your sister is in capable hands.”

I followed her instruction, but something in the tone of her voice finally broke my compliant spell. She, a complete stranger, had asked me to leave my sister’s side and forced me out of my own family home. I decided then to use my unhuman ability to safeguard my sister’s safety. Outside, in the company of the dipping afternoon sun, I had closed my eyes and Sighted my sister. Her vision was still clear, less feverish then but also unnaturally languid, as if she was slipping beneath water.

This is what I saw. I saw a most terrifying confirmation of the rumor: the medicine-seller was indeed a youkai. I saw her take off her hat and watched with horror as two beast-like ears emerged, resembling those of a rabbit. Her hair, scraggly with sweat, had been tied in a messy bun that threatened to spill. In the light of my sister’s mind-eye, her hair was the color of Wisteria blooms, strange and alien. I confess then I had sunk to my knees in despair. I had let two youkai inside my home and they were about to consume my sister. A powerless farmhand like me had not the power to stop whatever Fate had decreed, so all I could do was Watch.

The elder woman spoke up then in a withering tone:

“Udonge, why did you misdiagnose the poor woman?”

The youkai, who was evidently named Udonge, had replied in a wavering voice:

“Master, I submit to your judgement, but she’s showing all the symptoms of dengue. Fever, nausea and vomiting, aching…”

The woman cut her off with a dismissive chopping motion. I tried to See the woman at that moment, but like her apparent apprentice, she had no resonance in my ability. She was as freakish as any youkai.

“Udonge, ask her sister,” the elder woman snapped. My sister’s vision wavered then, and I felt her bubbling anguish return, for she was used to that tone of voice. She began gasping and fumbled for the woman. The youkai made a pained expression, but didn’t move.

“Udonge, now. Your attitude is threatening lives,” the elder woman repeated, more softly then as she reached out to stroke my sister’s hand. I could feel the knot of confusion tightening in my sister’s vision, and I clenched my fists in a futile gesture. I then heard the shuffling of feet behind me and opened my eyes. I felt my heart crawl into my throat, my chest tightening in fear.

“Miss Harukawa? Is something wrong?” The youkai’s voice called out from behind me. My eyes must have been wide with terror as I rose and turned towards her, for she continued only with hesitance, “I’m happy to say that your sister will be alright, but we need to ask a few questions… if you may.”

I do not doubt that she knew her disguise had been spoiled. I was seized then by a sudden daring: had I a weapon, I would have made a move to rip out her throat. I did not do so because the youkai named Udonge had continued on, willfully oblivious (I am sure) to the tension between us.

“Miss Harukawa, we are trying to save your sister. Please. Did she happen to, perhaps, work near a swamp? Did she complain of headaches before? How long has she been feverish?” Her questions were posed in an unconvincing, forced monotone. I tried to not look at the youkai’s eyes, but when I glanced there I found that they were steeped with apprehension.

“Please answer, Miss Harukawa. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Seeing that I did not even attempt to answer, her tense expression grew hurt and sullen. The youkai then grasped my arm and half-pulled, half-dragged me inside the house. My sister, lying now on a futon, had resumed her groaning. The manic insistence of her wordless pleading made our exchanges bitter and febrile.

“Master Eirin, Miss Harukawa knows. It’s why I didn’t even try the first time.” She had spoken in a low, deferential voice but I knew an accusation when I heard one. The woman named Eirin then shot me a brief, conspiratorial smile.

“Miss Orino. Miss Tsuru’s brain is presently swelling, and if she does not receive the correct treatment, she will most certainly die. I humbly request your compliance in answering my assistant Reisen’s questions. Please, begin again, Reisen.”

Her tone had been even but pregnant with unmistakable weight and threat. I spent moments in indecision, alternating between her and the youkai.

“Miss Harukawa, we’re not going to hurt you or your sister,” the youkai, who evidently had two names, insisted to me. “Did your sister work near a swamp?”

Cornered by two youkai and with my sister’s life dripping by, I had yielded. I shook my head and said that she had a habit of going to the river to chase fairies. At this, Eirin commanded:

“Look for any eschars, anything scab-like.”

Reisen had reacted immediately, stripping my sister and lifting her arms, inspecting the nape of her neck and other folds of skin. I had been on the verge of protest when, as Reisen lifted Tsuru’s right arm, I saw that my sister had a black scar the size of a thumbnail on her armpit.

“Reisen, observe. The work of tsutsugamushi, not mosquitoes. Scrub typhus, not dengue. Next time, talk to the patient.”

It seemed to me that she was giving her youkai assistant a mild reprimand, but I saw that Reisen had trembled and looked away. She looked more afraid than chastened. She had uttered a weak “Yes, master,” before reaching inside the medicine bag to retrieve what I presumed were the implements of treatment. Then, sighing, Reisen once again removed her hat, revealing again her two rabbit-like ears, before sitting beside my sister and closing her eyes.

I thought that this had been a threatening gesture, so I seated myself behind her, wondering what I could do in this situation. Suddenly, I felt a sure hand grip my shoulder.

“Miss Harukawa, you may watch if it calms you,” Eirin said then. “You may close your eyes and watch.”

Reisen, her furred ears tall and alert, leaned towards my sister. The living room, dim in the setting light of early evening, lit up in a strange red glow. I closed my eyes then.

The vision I relate to you now is as true and terrific as it had been then. Although my sister cannot be a verbal witness, her mind’s eyes were nevertheless the medium for the vision, and I am sure that you can extract a truthful confession out of her. However, as I have striven to demonstrate, I am an impartial observer. I hope therefore that my account may suffice.

I first saw hills, sloping and undulating into the distance as far the eye could see. Following their curvature, I arrived at their blackened peaks, and observed with wonder that the night sky seemed impossibly vivid and close. The River of Heaven had descended, august and magnificent, a million gleaming bitter-yellow stars close enough to touch. The quality of light was lilting and warm, the color of oft-remembered familiar memories. As my sister ambled forwards, a warm autumn breeze brought the scent of tea olive and a nearby river. I laughed then because I had realized that the nearby river was the one above.

A shrill whistling sound turned my sister’s mind-eye towards the horizon, where she observed a peculiar carriage, advancing on its own power along a little metal road.

I heard Reisen’s voice then, pointing the carriage out to my sister. “That thing is called a train, Miss Harukawa... Oh!”

My sister had begun flying around, as was her wont in her phantasies. She was laughing heartily as I Saw that she was aiming to touch the stars. However, before she could reach them, a bright flash of glaring red light had flooded her vision, and Tsuru immediately found herself seated inside the carriage.

“I’m sorry, Miss Harukawa. Maybe next time.”

Reisen was seated beside Tsuru, her height a little imposing. I confess that I felt no danger then, even though Reisen was a youkai who had the power to impart visions of dizzying reality. I reasoned afterwards that it was due to my powerlessness. My sister also seemed to accept her lot, content to gaze outside at the twinkling river of stars.

The interior of the carriage was made of the finest, shining wood. I have often wondered how the better-offs travel, and I suspected then that this was their standard. The seats were sturdy and lined with a cushion-y, soft material colored a faded hue of green. The scenery outside, I must tell you, was a marvel. We were moving at a steady pace, the metal road bringing us to a metal bridge spanning a clear, sparkling river. The banks of the river glistened with nodding pampas grass and brilliant purple gentians, so that as the carriage moved they blurred into a gentle bluish-white impression. The river, clear as a winter night’s sky, reflected its celestial brother above. The stars, not cold, gleamed generous and hazy.

The carriage made clanking loud sounds as it moved, and my sister turned to observe Reisen. She seemed to be squinting at a faraway object with her focused, glowing eyes while her ears alternately unfurled and drooped. Reisen’s hands operated unseen instruments. She was differently-attired, I had noticed, in a dark-blue uniform that seemed as stiff as her expression. However, she was grinning then, and rather widely at that. My sister made a move to touch her.

The next moment, my sister had snapped her attention back to the window. Outside she saw, flickering at first, the fairies she had longed to play with. I marveled at their variety and color. A blue winter one kept pace with the carriage and waved at my sister, wings made out of crystalline ice. The spring fairy, her blonde hair rippling in the night wind, spread cherry-blossoms in her wake. A gaggle of rain fairies in mismatched attires streamed across the lake, causing the surface to ripple and quiver with soft drizzles. My sister had stared, utterly fixated and evinced no trace of her earlier illness. I am not ashamed to say that I was also bewitched.

Without warning the full moon emerged as if from behind a veil, and the whole river was lit in an eggshell-white glow. The fairies were outlined and their dance was made merry. A green fairy descended from above with the appearance of a large swallowtail, cascading what appeared to be little shards of mirror-glass. Their tumbling fall reflected the warm moonlight, making it tinkle and spin into the interior of the carriage. My sister had squealed in delight then, her hands clapping and clamoring. A thousand herons, sparkling white, flew down upon the carriage…

The beautiful vision ended, as a dream ends, in a gradual reawakening to reality and in a vague disappointment. My sister and I Saw the familiar blackened ceiling of our living room, the spots of mold patchy in the evening gloom. Reisen’s sweating face hovered above my sister’s. Her eyes, glowing an unsettling hue of red, were muddy with concern. She breathed out a long-held breath and took several gulps of air before speaking:

“Master, it’s done?”

Eirin’s face, which had appeared beside Reisen’s, was a mask of genial calm. I opened my eyes then, because my sister had closed hers in deep, dreamless slumber.

“It is done. She should sleep for a day,” Eirin began patting Reisen’s shoulder before continuing, and I could see their stiffness going away. “That was Miyazawa, correct? Your repertoire is widening.”

I heard a sudden, relieved giggle from Reisen. A distinct impression came over me, that the world was theirs entire, if only for that moment.

“The fairies convinced her, didn’t they? I knew studying them would pay off. Then that moon, whoosh! I think I’ll put a moon somewhere every time,” Reisen’s voice was buoyed, presumably by her master’s praise. “Let’s get back, master. I’m beyond tired.”

After a spell, the two of them had turned to look at me. Eirin had shuffled closer, holding out a medicine box.

“Miss Harukawa, this is medicine for the both of you,” she opened the box and indicated at some pills, “The blue pills are your sister’s, to be taken once a day until they run out; the orange pills are yours, to take away your vision, to be taken at your discretion. My assistant will refill them every week, for a nominal fee.”

Reisen piped up then, her voice less cheerful than before.

“Please. We all try our best. When I come for the box, don’t do anything - sudden.” Saying this she had forced a bitter smile. I had forced my own reluctant nod.

I will not bore you with the details of what came after. Suffice to say that my sister is healthy. My Sight is also gone, so long as I take the pills. I admit that me telling this experience is only the final link in a long chain of conscience that spanned the better part of a year.

I suppose that the youkai had thought to buy my compliance with show and medicine, but in this they have failed. I cannot hide the truth and today I have related to you the truth.

My request is that they be left alone, so long as they continue to use their abilities for the benefit of the village. I understand that youkai are our enemies, but there may be individuals who aren’t so bent on murder. We could surely find a use for them, after a fashion. I hope that you may take my request into consideration, humble and ignorant as it is. The medicine-seller now comes to our house every other week and I do my part to keep an eye on her. Sometimes, I ask her how her day went, and sometimes she even deigns to answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Night on the Galactic Railroad is a really terrific story! I hope I've given it due respect in this chapter.
> 
> Orino talks the way she does because she's trying to sound sophisticated to Akyuu.


	3. A Student of the Art, Letter I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reisen learns traditional Japanese medicine (Kampo) from a young practitioner. Told in a letter format.

######  _Spring-Summer, Season 124/2009, recounted Summer, Season 125/2010_

Dearest Akyuu  
Allow me to open with all reverence to you,

Though the first of summer has been announced, the tempest-spirit of spring still holds terrible sway. The mornings are nipped with hoarfrost; the afternoons worried by the scud of rain clouds before swift winds. Days are soon over: evenings cower before the battering, flattening downpour of thunderous storms. These evenings bring the thought of you, Akyuu, and your unfortunate illness. I hope that the Chikujo-untan-to has aided your constitution, although I certainly cannot hope to match the efficacy of my father’s Kampo preparations.

Your _Yougaku_ records have afforded me my sole warmth during these rain-soaked days. I admit, the music did not hold me at first; there was something unsettled within them, and it urged me to fret about in that rain-dark house. However, the pieces had a lilting quality, almost in spite of themselves. As I listened, intrigued, I felt myself being stirred into false nostalgia. They are someone else’s memories, are they not? It’s very much like you to bottle these things, remember them for others. And you know how much I treasure memories and guard them. I thank you for your considerate and private gift.

I hope to pass on a more abstract, more trifling gift. In your previous letters, you have stated your ambition of becoming a teacher of history at the temple school. I admire you for choosing such a selfless ambition: most of us teachers, myself included, have simply fallen into the role, whether by circumstance or legacy. Doubtless my old tutor, Ms. Kamishirasawa, has told you about her particular pull of obligation, the importance of passing down history in Gensokyo. I am sure that you have _thoroughly_ digested her spiel on the virtues of good instruction, public duty, the full use of your talents, etcetera, so I shall not repeat them here. On the subject of ideals, Ms. Kamishirasawa is witheringly complete.

Instead, over the course of several letters, I shall humbly attempt to instruct you on the subject of _practicalities_ , using my own inheritance. Some months before he passed, my father abruptly said to me, “You will take over the Miyake Kampo Practice.” With that one sentence, he had bestowed upon me a terrific inheritance, and he soon set about ensuring that I deserved it. I had trained to become a Kampo practitioner, of course, but nothing could have prepared me for the rigors of teaching. Fortunately, my father distilled his methods into a set of three simple maxims: **Dignity, Partition, and Discipline**. He enclosed them within his journal, which instructed me to pore over. I venture that, in time, you will appreciate the genius inherent in the maxims: my time teaching has spanned half a decade now and the sheer practicality of the maxims still impresses.

I hope that you may consider granting me two small wishes in return. First, I dearly request that we shed all decorum in these correspondences. It is my sincere hope that, after our fruitful year of letters, you no longer view me as merely being your teacher. In my own private regard, you have long transcended your role: the depth of your understanding and your delicious sensitivity, in matters academic and otherwise, have elevated you far beyond the station of a student. I hope that you will henceforth consider me a confidant, a candid friend, as I have come to consider you. Please, weigh my request carefully.

My final wish is improper, and I hope you will attend to it (if you so desire to grant it) only after you are fully recovered. I have a curious account which I wish to relate to you. The account concerns the three maxims and a particular youkai, Reisen Udongein Inaba, her of the Hourai Pharmacy. It is a study in failure, both hers and mine. I have carried the account in secret for some months, and I fear that the lack of telling has rendered the experience rancid and rotting. It is like a knot of thoughts that I cannot undo; my nights are spent teasing and pulling at it to no avail. I am confident that an authority on youkai such as yourself may be able to aid me.

It will be some time before this sodden spring departs and makes way for the summer. Therefore, I pray for your speedy and favorable recovery.

Let me close with great respect to you,  
Chiyoko Miyake


	4. A Student of the Art, Letter II: Dignity

Dearest Akyuu,

Forgive my impropriety, but I seem to have forgotten the appropriate salutation for the month of Satsuki. I would, of course, happily write in circles about the watery tint of sunshine and the blades of kneeling grass, but I’m glad that we ditched those stuffy conventions. Me, you, we’re both modern women: we shouldn’t be required to write five sentences when one will do. The weather’s still terrible, there.

I’m terribly happy that your legs finally had the sense to start working again. I was afraid that I’d have to slap together some Kakkon-ka-jutsu-bu-to, go rambling through the mountain searching for aconite and licorice in this streaming weather. Tastes terrible no matter what, too. That would’ve been a shoddy present in exchange for all the sweet vinyls you’ve lent me, and then maybe I’d only stay your friend for a little while. And that would’ve been a real tragedy, for me at least. I really hope you’ll come visit soon, because the Buddhists just gave me some delicious rice crackers that I can’t bear to eat through alone.

So, my first act as your _candid_ friend will be to admit that before Reisen, I had never taught a youkai before. Through no fault of my own, of course; it’s not that bakedanuki and nekomata come flocking in to learn Kampo. I was groping blindly in the dark with her, so to speak, and I thought I was doing well, until suddenly I wasn’t anymore. Also, to answer your question, I’ve had difficult students before, but Reisen was no ordinary difficult student; you’ll judge for yourself later, but while it’s true that she had some _especial_ qualities which made her a massive royal pain, it was some of her more endearing traits that got us to where we were - nowhere good. I should’ve consulted you sooner, or read your Chronicles more carefully. She caused me much avoidable grief.

The music must be getting to me, because I’ve started all muddled up in the middle. If Reisen was good for anything, she was good for testing out the maxims. I thought the ‘teaching’ part went well with her, not so much the others. Again, I hope you’ll reserve judgement until I’ve finished my account, and this one takes some telling.

First, I’ll unmask a conspiracy: the medicine-people of Gensokyo all talk to one another. Like the Shinto and Buddhists do. You’d expect us to be trying to strangle each other. But no: though it’s true that the Continental medicine people are depressing and the Hourai Pharmacy thumb their noses at everyone else, we do try to band together to fix prices and run off charlatans and whatnot. We also get the occasional exchange student, and Reisen was one of those. Ms. Eirin Yagokoro sent me a very formal letter during the middle third of Kisaragi last year, requesting that I tutor her assistant for the spring. I was surprised: Ms. Yagokoro had her pick of the old Kampo houses, but wrote instead that I had some ‘novel approaches’ which had interested her. I thought she was referring to the fact that my father deviated from the _Sho Kan Ron_ , added in his own Continental learning here and there, but now I’m not so sure. I had agreed, of course: at the time, I hadn’t had a student in almost a year, so the stipend was very welcome.

Ms. Yagokoro then forwarded a very lengthy addendum. A catch. In it, she explained that her assistant was an ‘agreeable, well-behaved, non-murderous’ youkai who sold medicine in the village, incognito. She assured me the village council had decided that her assistant was perfectly harmless, useful even, for the village, so long as she kept to herself. Ms. Yagokoro even went to the trouble of including a fat missive from Ms. Kamishirasawa certifying (in as many words as possible) that yes, this particular youkai wasn’t trouble, but if she was then the shrine maiden and Ms. Kamishirasawa herself would come and stomp her flat.

Truth be told, even without the guarantees, I would’ve accepted - blindly and gladly in fact. I was gripped by this sort of secret curiosity towards the youkai: they had all that forbidden glamor and impossible wisdom after all, and I suppose that everyone in the village goes through a phase of wanting to ‘cross over’, be friendly with some of them. I had just been through a lean year, and so whenever I trekked out the mountain or the forest, I found myself wishing for an encounter with some strict but mystically wise tengu, like in the _Tales of the Handcart Priest_ or _The Palace of the Tengu_. I’d imagine spying great black wings unfold behind the trees, or hearing some stern voice call out from a hollow; then a tall figure would step out from the shadows, hand outstretched in somber greeting.

It was all silly nonsense of course, fantasy to take the edge off things; gods know I had wanted some color to invade all those days of root-digging and penny-pinching. That in mind, you can understand just how much the promise of a youkai student had excited me, to an embarrassing degree even. If you later blame me, just for this failing, then I have no choice but to blushingly accept responsibility.

And so, as agreed, Reisen came just after the Higan celebrations wrapped up, sometime during the last third of Yayoi. This was when those strange lights were dashing across Gensokyo, remember? Everyone was going off to the graves, watching those lights, getting back too late then spraining their leg or catching a cold or whatever. Beastly weather back then, too. I did very brisk business and had thought, well, things are looking up.

I remember very distinctly the day Reisen first arrived. It is a curious tale worth telling, and I thought that my conduct demonstrated the first maxim very well, considering. If you’ve been skimming through the letter, I’ll print the maxim here to catch your eye: **Dignity.**

> _**A teacher should be dignified from the first and she should be dignified until the last.** What is dignity? When you treat others and are treated by others as your standing dictates, then you have achieved dignity._

Did it work? I printed that directly from my father’s journal. It must sound a little odd, coming from someone who hates _hates_ decorum, but dignity isn’t the formal pap: dignity is heart-deep respect. You can’t learn anything from someone you don’t respect. It’s rather abstract, though, so I’ll just set you an example.

So, the day Reisen arrived, a spring typhoon was in full bloom. Horizontal rains, thunder echoing off the mountain, gales so strong the house was whistling: the works. I’d been preparing a batch of Maoto for the next day’s round of colds when I heard this voice sputter from outside. After you teach for a while, you get an ear for your student’s voices, and this one was straining to be heard over the storm but also trying ever so hard to not come off as loud and impolite. It was a sweet voice, too. I could imagine it soothing children as they choked on the more bitter herbs.

Now, I bet that someone as correct as you would’ve gone straight for the door, probably carrying a few of those heavy towels with you. And you would’ve been completely in the wrong. Being dignified from the first means letting your student wait until she realizes that she needs a teacher more than you need a student. You can’t be too hasty, otherwise she’ll think: oh, this one’s desperate. There aren’t any set waiting times, though: if you feel that your student’s being a little rude, you can make her wait for as long as you think fit. And so, I waited for as long as I thought fit.

After a while, the voice took on a more pleading tone, even coughed a few times. It was clearly desperate to be let in, knowing that someone was inside, but not yet. You have to listen for the change in her voice: a good student, when she knows her teacher’s in, will adjust her voice modestly. Once Reisen steadied her tone, then I was ready to let her in. That’s how you act dignified, Akyuu. And first impressions are the most important.

I’m sure that she’s been to your place several times, but Reisen’s _tall_. Not the pretty sort of tall either; she was the gangly, almost-boyish sort of tall, uncomfortable-like. All drenched to the bone like she had been then, she had looked even twiggier, like the wind would bowl her over. She then insisted on doing her introduction in the rain like that, bowing and splattering all over the hall.

“Good afternoon, Lady Miyake. I am Master Eirin Yagokoro’s assistant, Reisen Inaba. I am in your care. I hope you will have me for your student in the art of Kampo.”

Reisen went on to do a prim little speech about her respect for “traditional approaches” and “the roots of medicine.” The effect was a little absurd because her face was dripping rainwater, and she kept pausing her speech to drop me these tense little smiles. I hated florid speeches anyway, so I tried to urge her inside with my eyes.

To no avail. Even after all that she had refused to enter; I eventually realized that she was afraid of tracking mud into the house. She finally settled on rolling her trousers up and leaving her ruined shoes outside. All the time I was thinking, oh, will she get even more polite on me? Oh, yes, she’s gotten even more polite. It was off-putting, as if she were challenging me to a competition of manners.

When she finally went inside, Reisen was shivering so hard that I heard her teeth clatter, and so I herded her to a side room and ordered her to get decent. I had somehow expected youkai to be cold, but her arm was as clammy and lukewarm as any other person’s. She also smelled loamy, somehow.

Reisen had on the most ridiculous disguise too, though I could see what she was going for. She wore this baggy purple _happi_ coat over _momohiki_ trousers, coupled that with an oversized bamboo hat she had insisted on wearing inside and a ridiculous medicine bag that kept banging about the corners. She had even wrapped puttees on her arms and legs. Puttees! You have to admire the dedication. I supposed she was trying for that full _baiyaku-san_ look - them of the cure-alls, exotic medicine, and world-weary wisdom. It wasn’t a bad look, but even then I knew that she was overselling herself.

I lent her some gowns and waited a respectful distance outside. I remember thinking, if she doesn’t eat humans, then what does she eat? I kept preparing my Maoto, of course, but snuck out the back for some soggy rice crackers. She had seemed a little tense, so I thought that some snacks would calm her, preventing her next parade of propriety. I was wrong.

When she emerged, Reisen had managed to look even stiffer, despite me lending her the most ratty and casual of my gowns. She had kept her hat, and so it poked the air ridiculously as I introduced myself. It made her seem inconsistent, rude and overly polite at the same time, so I had asked her to take it off.

“I didn’t want to startle you, Lady Miyake, or make a bad impression. I’m sure that Master Eirin told you about this, but people still find it shocking. Some people, that is.”

What’s she going on about this time? I thought.

“Are you balding, Reisen?” I made a futile stab at humor.

“No, Lady Miyake. It’s just that I have ears. Maybe it’d be more comfortable if they didn’t show.” To my surprise, Reisen had flushed slightly and averted her eyes in - self-consciousness, I suppose? I had waved her ridiculous concern away.

Reisen then bowed before reaching out to take off her hat. Two large downy rabbit ears emerged, one after the other, both a little crumpled; then Reisen’s hair had spilled out, undone and matted, clinging wetly to her face and slapping onto the floor. I had jumped a little, in my head. A trick of dignity, Akyuu: when you’re anticipating a surprise, play it out in your mind first and it’ll stop it from becoming such a shock. In this case, I had pictured oni horns. Those ears were even more unnerving though, twitching as they did, swishing to and fro: they were alive, and reminded me of bug antennas. She also had what looked like large earrings on both of them, an uncanny human detail.

“That’s better, Reisen. Ms. Yagokoro did inform me, in fact, so there’s no need to be embarrassed.” I did my best to keep my voice level, but I suppose the reality of her youkai-ness had begun to sink in. I shuddered a little. Do you get the shakes too, Akyuu? I expect you’re used to them by now. It’s just that everything we’ve been taught builds them up as powerful and unpredictable, that you’re blinded to the reality of a gawky uncomfortable girl about your own age.

“Thank you, Lady Miyake. I must confess, it’s my first time being taught by people. I hope you’ll forgive my impoliteness.” She made another small bow, covering her face with her sodden hair, but her eyes peeked through and her ears perked up. Her eyes, large and rather sallow, had a searching judging look about them. I took it all as a challenge, a question: she was shoving her youkai-ness and seeing how I’d react.

Akyuu, one of the best tools for maintaining dignity is the well-placed question. It’s like kicking a chair from underneath someone: they’ll look ridiculous scrabbling about, no matter how poised they might have been.

“How old are you, Reisen?”

Her gaze became confused, her ears sullen. Chair: kicked.

“I don’t - I’m a youkai, Lady Miyake.” She paused, thought better than to answer with an evasion, before sliding away again. “I was born in the year of the Ox.”

“I’m twenty-two, Reisen, old enough. And you?” With eel-like persons, you have to make them catch themselves. Of course I knew that youkai are long-lived creatures: she could be a thousand years old, but it didn’t matter in this sense. I wanted her to admit her standing, relative to mine, pin it down herself.

“Ah, I suppose, in human - people - terms, I’m the same. A bit older maybe, but less knowledgeable certainly, than you, Lady Miyake.”

She still gave a slippery answer, but it would have to do. By underlining her proper standing, I seized the initiative, grounded her. She could be an all-powerful youkai outside, but in this house, she was just a student (albeit an interesting one). And I had the keys.

I wasn’t planning on letting them go, either. After that first lesson, Reisen didn’t turn up for a week, “owing to a fever,” but I suspected that Ms. Yagokoro had had second thoughts about sending her to my practice. I guess she had expected someone a little more yielding, me being quite young for a Kampo practitioner. I had sent Reisen my Maoto preparation, free of charge, just to stress the point that I was the teacher and she the obliging student.

I had hoped that would realize, on her own, that dignity befitting her station did not spring from simpering displays of politeness; dignity for a student comes from quiet unshowy respect for her teacher. I was wrong, of course. Maybe you thought I was being too harsh on her poor little soul, but believe me when I tell you that I was right. Reisen, the true Reisen, is a stuck-up dolt who never pays her dues in respect. Instead she dresses her pride with propriety. Her true intentions were anything but pure.

She was, in short, a youkai through and through; I should have realized that no amount of teaching can change a being’s nature.

Still, it’d only be a small exaggeration to say that the ‘teaching’ part went well on account of that first encounter. I wasn’t unflappable - far from that, I made many simple mistakes - but I believe that, given it was my first close encounter with a youkai, it was an experience worthy of being written into my father’s journal. That Reisen managed to learn any Kampo at all, despite everything, was due to the prompt show of dignity.

That was the easy part, of course. I hope I’ll be able to tell the rest when you come over and share these crackers with me. Please bring your other _Yougaku_ records! We’ll have a great evening together.

Your candid friend,  
Chiyoko Miyake


	5. A Student of the Art, Letter III: Partition

Dearest Akyuu,

Weather’s still rotten. I’m sure the roof’s all moldy and one day it’ll come crashing down on me and that’ll be the end of that.

Truth be told, I’m pretty sad that your help didn’t allow you to come to my place. Are they allowed to dictate what their master does, now? I could just as easily rescue you from them, you know, with my Kampo poisons and magics; you only need to say the word. My place is only a little outside the village, after all, no dens of youkai here. I’m enclosing the Buddhist rice crackers, so I hope you’re dirtying this letter with the crumbs right now. They really are good, and it really was a shame to eat them without company.

This sodden rain’s really put a damper on my mood, and I’ve had to rewrite this letter several times now, because I kept putting in sentimental blather about my father or Reisen. You don’t need to read that: you need good solid teaching instructions. First though, your question.

No, I don’t believe that there’s a ‘Hourai Pharmacy Conspiracy’ to take over the medicine business in Gensokyo. I do believe, however, that Ms. Yagokoro wants to become the ‘face’ of medicine, the first among equals. That she’s demanding deference from all the others - starting from the youngest and most exposed, I suppose. She’s certainly marshalling all of her resources: in our more open moments, Reisen told me about devices from the outside, devices able to peer into your brain and see through your body. What, exactly, do I have against that? Should I complain about them curing people too well? It’s a smothering niceness, is all.

I’ve felt the effectiveness of their medicine, too: who hasn’t taken a Butterfly Dream pill, if only out of curiosity? You probably know this already, but Ms. Yagokoro took the idea of that pill from the _Chuang-tzu_. She actually made medicine out of a _story_. I guess most people take it to do away with nightmares, but when I took it, I really felt that I was a butterfly who dreamed about being a Kampo practitioner in Gensokyo. If Ms. Yagokoro can make medicine like that, well.

I’m not grousing, honest. The previous section, for example, was originally two pages long. You probably want the rest of the Reisen story for your Chronicles, and I need to get on with the lessons. And so, we are agreed.

I really hope you didn’t skim through the letter. I understand that the previous one took a little while to get going, but I _did_ have a lot to set up, and it was all heartfelt. Just in case, here’s the maxim to catch your eye: **Partition.**

__

> _**A teacher must set up a border between his role and the rest of his life.** Teaching is a taxing job that requires the extent of your wits and the fullest exercise of your dignity, so be clear when you are stepping out of the role._

Did you catch that? It basically means that you shouldn’t _live_ as a teacher, You have your front-door, teacher face, and you have your side-door, non-teacher face. So no, I _don’t_ go about the village testing out my dignity or kicking people out of chairs.

See, the best thing about dignity is that it reveals itself; once you’ve shown it, it becomes inherent. When my father went about the village, people would address him as ‘teacher’ and bow respectfully, even when his hands and face were soiled from root-digging. At the same time, he could get his students to open up, like flowers: lots of nights, my father would entertain several of them in the tea room, and I’d fall asleep to the burbling of their talk.

Sometimes though - and this is how I know he had a good partition - sometimes, you’d hear soft weeping. His students would spill their hearts out to him. He wasn’t some scary teacher; he was their friend, and he was mine, too.

The gist of a partition, as told by my father, was this: _You can’t teach a person before you know the person, and to know a person means stepping out of the teacher role_. So the way I figured, it went like this: Reisen is a fake-polite, slippery sort of character, so I haven’t gotten to know the actual her, the youkai-her. I had seen glimpses of it, yes - when she felt sure of herself, her voice would lilt higher, prouder - but she would just as quickly scurry back, meeting my dignity with more fakery. I had to set up a place where she could show her youkai self, and then I had to befriend and teach to that self.

Setting a partition is simple enough, especially for you, Akyuu. My rule: change the setting. Me and Reisen spent the first month in the teaching room, and it’s an intimidating space. Coming in, a picture of my father (one of those fancy daguerreotypes) would stare at you, silently judging; as you moved towards the desks, you had to avoid these dusty-smelling lacquer boxes full of preserved herbs and roots; the kneeling student desks are bland-looking and were a little too small for Reisen, so often she’d be stuck in this squashed seiza position. Anyway, sitting in her place you could only look at the teacher, the blackboard, or my father’s face. The whole room hollered ‘learning!’ - a little too loudly.

Instead, after the month of Uzuki passed, I began moving her to the tea room once the lessons were over. It’s a sparse and cold affair: altar, table, shelf, record table, pillows in the corner. You didn’t feel too stuffy in there, though. So I’d declare “The lesson’s over, Reisen. Be at ease.” Then I’d stretch my arms out, move to the tea room where I had snacks prepared, and begin eating.

So, the partition is simple enough, but getting a stiff like Reisen to ease up was more difficult. Oh, she was deeply confused at first, must’ve thought this was some kind of trick. She’d follow to the tea room but then sit stock-still, still in her seiza position, waiting for further instructions. I’d just munch my snacks in silence, watching her, until the afternoon was over and she excused herself. Yes, I tried making conversation, but they all went stale, whether about her hair (me: very gorgeous, her: thank you), about the weather (me: beastly, her: yes), or about the snacks (me: aren’t they tasty, take one of them, her: yes, no I could never impose). Not a great way to know a person at all. Until a certain afternoon in the month of Satsuki, that is.

It was one of those dun afternoons, you know: rain but also wan orange sunshine, slipping slowly below the hills. It was after an especially hard lesson on Ki ingredients, and Reisen had several times been on the verge of blurting something out, but kept thinking better of it. She had looked frankly sloppy then: the first clue had been her hair, normally done up in a bun or high ponytail; that day it had been done in a frizzy, ‘couldn’t care less’ style. The second clue had been her clothes: she usually changed into something decent after shedding her disguise, but that day her blazer had been scuffed and sweat-stained.

After our lesson, I noticed that she wobbled in her sitting position, and her ears were held at a questioning angle. That had sealed it, something big was on her mind. I was feeling a little amused, so I poked her leg with a manju bun. Her legs had immediately stiffened.

“Loosen up, Reisen, what is it?”

Reisen blinked several times and I thought, goodness, she’s the roundabout type. I pushed a plate of manju towards her (very nice milk-flavored ones) and to my surprise, she took one of them.

“Lady Miyake, I don’t think Ki exists,” she hesitated, squeezing the bun, “I can accept the other two. I’ve seen fluids and blood. Ki’s not there.”

I gave her my patient, indulgent look. It was her habit: she would casually let drop that she _just_ didn’t believe in this or that, often days after the lessons were over. Sometimes she did even worse, so this was unusually prompt of her. I tried to explain.

“Ki’s the vital energy making your mind and body function. You can’t see it like the others, but you can tell when a person’s low on it. Like I’ve said, that’s called _kikyo_.”

Just like that her mask of politeness fell away and I _saw_ her. Reisen _snapped_ at me, her tone high and impatient, imperious.

“I understand that. But what if - what if I said that chakra exists, and that a lack of chakra causes disease. But then I said that you can’t see chakra, you can’t touch, you can’t feel it. Then what if I started giving you pills to add chakra. Do you see where I’m going?”

The next moment she had visibly deflated, shoulders and ears falling. She looked at her manju with a curious intensity before placing it back on the plate. My first thought: _we’re fighting_! Of course, I let things slide because the lesson _had_ ended, so she was merely being a rude guest in my home.

I was beginning to work out an answer in my mind when Reisen continued, her voice still snappish.

“I can see things, Lady Miyake. And I haven’t _seen_ Ki.”

I was delighted. Not so much about her Ki-skepticism (I knew it existed, after all), but about her revealing her youkai-ness. I thought I had her worked out: she thought herself far more perceptive than mere humans. By insisting that I saw something that she didn’t, I was offending her, calling her supremacy into question. I could deal with pride, had dealt with it.

Staring directly into her eyes, I had asked: “What else can you see, Reisen?”

It all sounds very flippant now, Akyuu, but nothing had happened. Her eyes then were a chestnut brown and swimming with weariness. The pride had drained from them, and I saw something in them that I couldn’t deal with. I felt a wave of - it seems ridiculous now - pity.

“I can see a lot, Lady Miyake. Even you. I still haven’t seen Ki.”

It was another one of her patent evasions, but her earlier edge was gone. She had just sounded lost. Truth: even after she had shown a glimpse of her youkai self, I had wanted to comfort her somehow. And so I did. She was someone small and withdrawing, rigidly doing her best, and the thought of that just washed over me. I have never been able to deal with pity.

“Alright, Reisen. I’ll demonstrate Ki. Get that pillow in the corner, push the table, then lie down.”

She did so, resignedly, eyes fixed to the ceiling. Whatever was troubling her had made her even more pliant than usual. Her earlier question had been an outburst, a childish tantrum, and letting it out had seemed to shame her. Laid down, I could see her body bracing, curling away from me. I wondered what she expected me to do.

So I said: “Legs outstretched. I’m going to diagnose you, alright? I’ll touch your stomach and feel your pulse, too. I’m also going to ask a few questions, alright?”

She nodded.

One of the basic tools of Kampo is the abdominal check. I’d never done this to a youkai before, but she _seemed_ to have the general bits of a human. I opened her blazer, put my ears close to her stomach, then tapped the upper part of it through her clothes. As I suspected, her stomach had made soft sloshing sounds in response. When I pressed my fingers on her stomach, I felt a hard knot running down its middle. Her whole abdomen was a tight ball of clammy stress; I usually only felt that in patients being hounded by the Salt Mansion’s debt collectors.

I moved onto her left wrist, then her right, checking her pulse. She had pretty fingers, slender and graceful, but they were callused and her nails had been chewed on. Her palms were coarse, greasy with dried sweat; cold. When I found it, her pulse was fluttery and shallow and shy. I squeezed her hand then, gently: not strictly part of the procedure, but sometimes necessary.

“Alright, any fullness in your stomach lately?” Reisen nodded, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. “Nausea?” Nod. “Feeling tired quickly, lately?” Nod. “No appetite?” Nod. I placed my hand on her neck and felt a blaze of warmth, a swallow: again, necessary. I moved to her forehead, feeling for a fever. That one had earned me a brief, placid glance from her.

She was showing all the typical symptoms of Rikkunshito-sho. She had a lot on her mind and it was draining her spleen and stomach Ki, stagnating her liver, making her constitution fragile and playing havoc with her mood. I told her as much.

“Ridiculous. Stop touching me.” Reisen’s answer had been terse and weary. I withdrew my hands.

She sat up and adjusted her blazer, studiously avoiding my gaze. A heavy silence descended between us, as if some boundary had been crossed. Each one of us waited on the other.

“What’s been going on, Reisen? Something at the pharmacy?”

I felt the spring afternoon deepening around us. The wind rose.

“Yes. No, not only that. Just, old guests, and they’re not doing anything. And you.” Reisen trailed off but had continued to sit there, rubbing her outstretched legs, her figure silhouetted against the fading light. Suddenly she gave a peppy shout, a “hah!” Cheering herself on, I figured.

“How long have they been there?”

“They won’t stay long.”

Reisen slowly clasped and unclasped her hands. In the dusky glow, her gesture had cast strange shadows.

“They’ve even brought their new pet. It’s just, marathons and fights in the morning. Then I’m to sell medicine, in this rain. Then I have you in the afternoons. Then guests again at night.” She squeezed her toes, still avoiding eye contact. Her ears bobbed once, twice. Suddenly, the Hourai Pharmacy made a lot less sense to me ( _fights?_ ), and I didn’t have a reply for her.

Finally, rubbing her face, she had turned to me, her eyes strangely glassy.

“Let’s pretend we never talked about this, Lady Miyake. I’ll return us to the way things were. I’m sorry. Thank you for the diagnosis.”

She rushed to excuse herself, but I had insisted on giving her the Rikkunshito preparation and the manju. I was thrilled: I had gotten through to her, spoken to her actually - not the fake-polite, assistant-to-Eirin-Yagokoro Reisen, but the roiling, haughty youkai underneath. I was so sure that the pity I felt was an oddity of the moment - she wasn’t some piteous creature, after all. I was finally ready to teach.

The lesson here, Akyuu, is that once you set up a proper partition, it is only a matter of patience. As long as you have demonstrated an ounce of dignity, your students will eventually realize that, yes, there is no contradiction: you can be their strict teacher by day, and be their understanding friend after that. As long as the proper dues are paid, that is.

Sorry to be formal again, but I have a request to make. If it’s not possible for you to come to my place, would it be possible for me to be a guest at yours? The next part is rather difficult to put in writing, and I feel it would be best to tell it over some mochi and red tea. Please, consider looking into my request.

Your candid friend,  
Chiyoko Miyake


	6. A Student of the Art, Letter III: Addendum

I’m sorry to be abrupt, but the previous letter was a load of lies. I was blushing when I wrote it, blushing when I reread it. That’s why it ended so suddenly. Remember I wrote that I originally put in a lot of mawky guff? It turns out that without it, the next part makes no sense and is dishonest besides.

So as your candid friend, here is the sentimental bridge between letters. I’m not even going to pretend that there’s a lesson here.

Reisen didn’t follow her own advice, of course. In our lessons that week after the Rikkunshito episode, she kept circling and circling around the topic like a kite. She would talk vaguely about ‘guests’ and become distracted, stare at nothing in particular. I even caught her doodling crabs, once. _Crabs_. Still she would clam up during our tea room sessions, though she ate the snacks. It was maddening: there was this thick anticipation in the air, as if she were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Eventually, _eventually_ , I realized that because she was the one who asked that the topic not be brought up again, that it fell to me to breach the topic. This is the kind of messy Reisen-think that I would become familiar with, a cowardly hue of stubbornness wrapped up in manners.

I played her game, I did. I asked her if her guests had left, and why she worried about them so. And then, honest, Reisen gave me this lippy smile, like she had caught me doing something untoward.

“Lady Miyake, I’m sorry that the guests have distracted me, even here. They’re my - were my - old teachers. I haven’t seen them in a while. I wasn’t expecting them. I’m not sure how much more I should tell.” She had affected a hesitant half-whisper. Fakery through and through.

I told her that I couldn’t teach her if she left her mind at home.

“Well, that’s true. I guess I’ll have to tell you, as I’m your student? I’m not used to talking so frequently to people, so please forgive me.”

It was another one of her excuses, of course; it wasn’t as if she blabbed about her guests with any discretion. From what I gathered, her guests were sisters, and they made for horrible teachers. One of them (“the sister with the ponytail”) made Reisen run 10-ri marathons every morning and smacked her around with a sword. I was about to call her out on this, but she showed me her blazer, which did indeed have a long, terrifying cleft up its left sleeve. The other one (“the sister with the hat”) only seemed to laze around, but Reisen went on about her slovenly habits and the amount of “special cooking” that she had to do for her.

As her story wore on, I recognized the tone that she was striving to take. She wanted to say: I don’t loathe my abusers, they’re my old, embarrassing friends who take things too far sometimes. It was in the way she mimed the ponytail-sister slashing at her ears, and the self-conscious little giggles she had made when she told me how her torturer fell into some kind of trap. In her stories, Reisen played the generous host, familiar with their odd expressions of love.

And yet, the edge wouldn’t leave her voice. Her tone felt accusatory, somehow, as if I too was complicit.

Reisen had been telling me about how the hat-sister had wanted a last-minute meal when I stopped her. I asked her, very simply: “Aren’t you exhausted?”

Reisen didn’t even miss a moment. She gave me her first genuine smile of the afternoon, and said: “Yes, very much, Lady Miyake. Like you.”

What followed was a peculiarly honest conversation. I’ll print it in full because I doubt any paraphrase could do it justice.

“It’s alright if you’re not sure what to make of them, Reisen.”

“Yes. Both of them are kind, very much, sometimes.”

“Not all the time.”

“Not all the time. Teachers are meant to be like that, yes? Even for humans.”

“Even for us, right now.”

“Is that why you have to pretend? I can see you. You’re not good at pretending. I’m not sure how to react. Should I keep going with it, with you? I’m not a human student, though. Your wavelengths aren’t as short as you make them out to be. They’re really quite long.”

I felt invited to explain myself. So I told her about my father, Akyuu. It began that evening, anyway. She had listened patiently until it was over, then told me a bit more about the sisters. When night fell we fed the stove together, and I put on some of my father’s records, and both of us just listened to him for a while.

The afternoons after had Reisen talking kindly about death. We shared some of the jisei we had memorized. Reisen favored the melancholic: her absolute favorite had been Ariwara no Narihira’s death poem. “He wrote about not expecting it, even as he’s dying. He gave me a pretty good idea about death.” She had talked about death as if she were describing some foreign landscape seen only dimly, but I didn’t mind. What she said was true.

What would you have done in my place, Akyuu? I meant, the entirety of my place, Kampo practice and all. Would you also have pretended that you knew how to live on after death, knew how to teach?

Maybe all my previous letters were lies as well. I’m as roundabout as Reisen, aren’t I? It wasn’t pity I felt for her, and she had known all along; it was a sort of fellow-suffering. I hope you will not judge me too harshly for this. Please, do not judge me too harshly.

Your friend,  
Chiyoko Miyake.


	7. A Student of the Art, Letter IV: Discipline

Dear Akyuu,

I’m alive, yes. The tree completely missed the bedroom, but it did flatten the house in general.

I’m safe, yes. I’m currently writing in what remains of the tea room and I can see the blustery sky through the rafters. The view’s quite pretty.

First I’d like to thank you sincerely. I’ve only just realized that the man who came over that first evening was a Hieda branch member; now I’m eating your food and wearing your clothes, after a fashion. I realize I’m sounding like Reisen, but I could never impose further. Please, thank him for me as well. I’ll come down to the village when I’ve given up.

The lesson for today: **Discipline**.

> **Discipline is using the right tools to correct the wayward.**

My father had a lot to say about discipline, but his content’s highly technical. People have gotten the wrong idea the few times I’ve shown his work. My advice is to observe your student: what does she respond to? Physical fear, guilt, and shame are the three axes. If a student is still recalcitrant after one, try degrees of the other two.

This concludes my lessons. If you so wanted, you could stop reading this letter now, and I would completely understand. Those three maxims are now my sole inheritance, other than my father’s journal. I hope they have impressed you with their practicality.

Still, you asked an interesting and difficult question, and a great part of this letter will be devoted to answering it. “ _How did it feel to cross over?_ ” Well, Akyuu, it felt very ordinary and then very terrifying, all at once. All crossing-over tales end this way, don’t they? The tengu in _Tales of the Handcart Priest_ , one and all, conspired to tempt the priest with visions of hell, and were about to show him the pure land when they were quelled. I had no such luck.

Ironically, the trouble began with discipline. You’d expect that after everything I told Reisen, and everything she told back, she'd _deign_ placing just a small bit of respect on my shoulders. Instead, here’s a few choice quotes from the weeks after:

“Lady Miyake, Ki doesn’t exist. Anyway, I think Kampo does well without it. And so I didn’t add the Ki ingredients. The preparations did fine, I think.”

“Lady Miyake, I thought you should know, I didn’t add the aconite into the Shigyakuto preparation. Aconite poisons the stomach, so I don’t think you can say the herb is ‘hot’. Poison feels cold to me. I should know, I’ve been poisoned before.”

“I had a friend prepare me some lily-of-the-valley extract. I did some study, and I think it would strengthen our Saiko-keishi-kankyoto preparation. Kampo-wise I’m not sure if it’s empty or full, hot or cold. Doesn’t it only matter afterwards, Lady Miyake? As long as it’s effective?”

Reisen would laugh off these comments in the tea room sessions. She wouldn’t apologize, nor even talk about the comments - she just sniggered and changed the topic. When I cornered her, she’d smile guiltily and say, “Aren’t we friends now, Lady Miyake?” or “Yes, Lady Miyake, I’ll go along next time.” Afterwards Reisen would find some new principle of Kampo to casually violate. It wasn’t that she was defiant per se, since she corrected her mistakes after being told off. Only, she had begun to get little too blasé, too casual, with Kampo. And with me.

One time, though, she went too far. I’d been insisting on the existence of Ki, again. Reisen had chosen to accept Ki “for here”, but said that it was only a substitute for ignorance in Gensokyo. Her exact words had been, “It’s fine for _here_ , but our science is a lot more advanced. It’d be impossible for humans to understand, though, so maybe we’ll talk as if Ki exists. Really, you’re sounding like your father.”

I saw red. It was the implication, I think, that my father was both ignorant and stubborn. I had been peeling something or another, maybe an apple, but before I knew it I had physically disciplined her.

Reisen was fast, but my lesson had the advantage of surprise. Knife extended - whistling - sudden impact. She had raised both her arms in hasty defense thinking I was making for her face: she was mistaken, as always. Afterwards, I was so surprised to find that I had drawn blood that it took me moments to realize that Reisen had _disappeared_.

She hadn’t moved far; I could feel her presence in the room (ironically, due to her Ki), but she had disappeared from sight. I could hear her drawing shallow breaths, wincing a little. I grabbed the space where her arm had been and found the edge of her blazer. I tugged: she resisted, invisibly. The whole scene was dreamlike, hazy, and I had to say something to break the trance.

“I’m sorry, Reisen, but you ought to be too.”

She appeared again, quite suddenly. Sprawled on the floor, she had looked embarrassed or disgusted, cradling her left arm and guarding a tense distance. I saw that the knife had cut an angry red slash on the back of her left wrist. Her ears were swiveling, swiveling.

Despite everything I felt a morbid curiosity well within - what else could she do?

“Why did you do that? Why not just shout at me?”

I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. It came out in this pathetic, breaking mewl.

“I miss my father very much, now, don’t you spite him.”

What was Reisen’s expression then? I’ve turned it over and over in my mind. I supposed at first that it had been pity mixed with disgust, which was appropriate. Some time after, I decided that it had been a dawning empathy. Now, however, I’m sure that the empathy was false; she hadn’t understood anything about me - she had only been replaying one of her own memories, thinking that she understood.

“I’m sorry, Lady Miyake. Please drop the knife.”

I did so. With a surprising swiftness Reisen had clutched the knife and thrown it away. I felt my arm being grasped, tightly, and I let myself be dragged to the tea room. When the situation called for it, Reisen could turn surprisingly persuasive.

“Really? Please, Lady Miyake, help me. You’re the expert.”

Reisen sighed and rested her cut arm on the table. Numbly I examined the wound, which was surprisingly deep and oozing blood. Wound treatment in Kampo is simple, uncontroversial. I admit that treating her had been comforting, almost. First, I cleansed her wound using a soapy solution made from crushed Primrose flowers and Ginseng. It stings, a lot, but Reisen bore the pain admirably.

“Um, Lady Miyake, you’re not also putting poison into me, right?”

It was a joke. I laughed, a little. Next, I sprinkled _jin bu huan_ powder on her wrist to stop the bleeding and swelling. Reisen had flexed her fingers, noted that it tickled. As I bandaged her wrist, I told her about how samurai would treat horrific wounds with the same powder, how it was hot and represented ‘fire’. Reisen had nodded along.

Last, I gave her fingers a squeeze. Despite everything, she had squeezed back, then gave me a confused, worried smile.

“You’re difficult. Sometimes, I can’t tell when you’re sincere.” After a pause, Reisen continued with odd, determined emotion. “You’re sick with something. Your father passed on and you haven’t, and it’s making you sick.”

I told her a very short version of the last four years. You’re not missing anything, Akyuu: it was four very similar variations on the same difficult year.

“Um, I thought that only happened in poems and stories. I suppose that it can’t be helped. Please leave it to me.”

You know, printed like that, Reisen’s statement sounds callous, but I swear at the time she had said it a bit more artfully, more sadly. I had left things to her, of course.

The emergency treatment, as she called it, turned out to be far more fantastic than I’d anticipated. In your Chronicles, you wrote that Reisen has the ability to ‘manipulate insanity’ and that staring into her eyes would cause a person to go mad. Was that a sort of editorial discretion on your part? She could do (and did) far, far more than that.

Our first session, for example, a week after I slashed her hand. This must’ve been, oh, second third of Minazuki. In this very tea room, dusk-dimmed, she had held tightly to both my hands and told me matter-of-factly that she would induce a hallucination of a field of flowers. All I had to do was stare into her eyes.

“I’m just testing things out,” she said, by way of reassurance. “I’m holding your hands if you fall over. Also, if you want to stop for any reason, shout ‘Luna’. Or just panic, I’ll hear you.”

I had agreed, more out of youkai-curiosity than anything. I sensed no guile coming from her; if anything, she had seemed to be the more nervous of us. Her fingers felt clammy. I saw the scar on her left hand and wondered if youkai healed faster.

“Whenever you’re ready, look into my eyes. And not a word of this to my master. I’m only doing this to cure your sickness.”

I remember taking a deep, gulping breath, then looking into her eyes. To my surprise, they were a deep, piercing red - for an instant, the color had filled my entire vision. Looking into them had felt like drowning. The floor tumbled crazily from under me, a brief falling sensation, and then my feet found sure footing.

My gaze tracked upwards from my feet, and found that the ground curved impossibly upwards, a mind-bending hill covered in lilies of every description. To my left, a sea of gold-band lilies nodding to a spectral breeze, as far as the eye cared to see: to my right, a gentle gully awash in tiger lilies, speckled impossibly purple, blue, white, and orange. Light shone from somewhere high, though I could see no sun. Truth: I had struggled to draw breath. Usually a view so splendorous reveals itself slowly, from a distance, then up close, but this was all at once and from every direction. I was a minute stranger in a world of lilies. It was an assault - beautiful, but an assault.

I fell backwards, but felt Reisen’s hands grasp me surely. I could still feel her sweat, even though her hands weren’t there.

“Ah, you’re a faller.” I _felt_ Reisen’s voice, echoing inside my head. “You’d make for an easy foe, you know that? Um, so do you feel any nausea? Lack of balance?”

I felt both those things, but I didn’t want to give up so easily. I shook my head and took an unsteady step forward. The lilies parted, wobbly.

“No, no, I can see you from here, Lady Miyake. No politesse here, no pretending please. Luna?”

Luna, I thought. Instantly the landscape dissolved, retreating up a vanishingly distant point, and gradually resolved itself into the darkening tea room. First the altar, then the phonograph, window, shelf, table, Reisen. The red glare had disappeared, her eyes again dark brown in the evening gloom. Her determined stare relaxed and she let go of my hands. Scrunching her eyes tight, she had breathed out.

“Not a word of this, Lady Miyake. Promise. Promise?”

I had quickly and gratefully sworn myself to secrecy. I would’ve been insane to let such an ability go to waste. I had the clearest vision of reunion, like coming home after a long day: I’d find his shoes in the hall, catch the musky smell of fresh roots, and there, in the tea room, eyes shut in pensive attention, I would find my father. My chest nearly collapsed for pining. A little more, I thought, a little more; it took every ounce of my being to not push Reisen for an immediate reunion.

The very next day, Reisen confessed that she’d had second thoughts.

“I don’t think meeting your father again would cure your illness, Lady Miyake. He wouldn’t be your father, remember? He’d be an illusion that I created.”

I was livid and made no attempt to hide it. I accused her of breaking her promise (as if we had made a deal beforehand), assured her that I had it all thought out (as if I was capable of thought beyond simple longing). Please try to understand, Akyuu. I had only wanted him for a few moments. Listen to his voice again - properly say goodbye - leave; the simplest thing for a youkai of her ability.

In my mind I have often signposted this as the point of no return, but I leave judgement open for you. Reisen had caved, agreed to my absurd request, as I knew she would. Fellow-sufferers recognize one another, after all: in expressing her second thoughts she hadn’t been looking for restraint, but for _license_. True, I’d been hungry for my father’s presence, but Reisen had felt her own morbid pull. Long before I handed her my father’s journal, she had already decided to judge him, judge me, cast herself as someone above us all. And I had let her.

My hands have frozen. I shall write more in the morning, Akyuu, I promise. This letter has enough self-pity as it stands.

Your friend,  
Chiyoko Miyake.


	8. A Student of the Art, Letter V

Dear Akyuu,

My father was an illusion for two.

We worked hard to craft my father: I set aside Kampo for the week to work out the details with Reisen. I allowed her to pore over his journals, and gave her all the pictures I had of him, even those I had drawn myself (inexpertly). I thought it would give him emotional depth, somehow. For her part, Reisen had set upon the task with a sort of grim determination that made me feel safe leaving my father in her hands.

The setup was simplicity itself and we spent the first few visions perfecting the details without my father in the picture. I would meet him in the tea room in the morning, as I did when he was alive. There was to be records and hot tea on the table, music from the phonograph. My father would turn to face me, and I would talk to him about the last few years. Reisen would have him nod at appropriate moments. He would then lay a hand on my shoulder, smile, exit.

Still, the first time I came face-to-face with my illusionary father, he had no face. I had screamed bloody murder, of course.

It’s funny in a way, Akyuu. I am sure that, having crossed over, I am the first human to have seen most of Reisen’s many different faces. I was a little dazed after that disastrous vision, and she had positively _fretted_ over me.

“Would black tea be okay, Chiyo? I’m really sorry, I gave you a nightmare. Not good at human faces yet. I’m so sorry.”

“Where do you put the sugar - do you even want sugar? Would it be okay to light the stove now? Back home, our heaters are a lot more practical, I want to bring them here sometimes. Though I like how yours is a lot more solid. Seems it’s proud to be heating this house.”

She then gossiped about the Scarlet Devil Mansion and their money issues: they had apparently resorted to paying for Hourai Pharmacy medicine with crates of black tea. We commiserated about clients bartering odds and ends for medicine; I told her about the time a villager had paid for Maoto with dried grasshoppers. Pretty soon, the faceless phantom was the last thing on my mind. Her company felt warm - even after she left for the night, I had felt her presence flitting about the house.

Having reread my letters, I’ve definitely omitted a lot of these moments with Reisen. Maybe they were soured by the conclusion. If she weren’t such a youkai, she’d have become my confidant, I am sure. She had seen through my faces and partitions, after all.

Eventually, we compromised by changing the time of the day to late afternoon, casting my father in silhouette. I would only see the outlines of his face and the hint of his smile, but that would have to be enough. Reisen said that she would double the detail on the surroundings and the music. That had done the trick.

My dreams started blending with the visions. This would’ve been Fumitsuki, towards the end of Reisen’s tutorship. I would awaken before sunup and amble towards the tea room, as was my habit, but feel my skin prickle. I would ignore this sensation; I’ve been long enough outside the village to know when real danger called, and this wasn’t that. Just before entering the tea room though, I would feel an icy fear bloom in my stomach. My heart would pump, spreading the tingling fear to my arms and legs. My father’s music would start up in the tea room, and I’d be seized with the notion that some scaly hairy thing was crouched at the other side of the sliding door. My arms would slide the door open, then I’d wake up in cold sweat.

“That means the treatment’s affecting you,” Reisen had chirped happily over some red-bean mantou. “Trust me on this, Chiyo.”

I placed my full trust in her, and she in turn became accommodating. She hadn’t objected when we went over facial and tongue diagnosis techniques, even though I was sure that the Hourai Pharmacy didn’t rely on such methods. She had simply become an abiding student, as I’d hoped she would after getting to know her.

The nightmares subsided after a while, it was true. In their place were oddly vivid dreams, though I couldn’t guess at their meaning. In one, I would hear my father’s voice call out from over a hill, but as I crested it, I would find myself nested in a field of lily-of-the-valleys. In another, I would lose sensation in my arms and legs and feel my heart beat irregularly - beat, pause, beat-beat, pause. I would wake up with ringing ears.

After a week of vivid dreams, Reisen declared that her illusion of my father was as perfect as it could reliably be, and that I was now fully receptive. Her explanation had been technical, something like, “I’m attuned to your wavelength.” She also told me how the full moon would amplify the effects of her visions. Things were falling into place.

The afternoon before the grand vision took place, Reisen had come bearing a bundle of clothes along with her usual large pack of medicine.

“Chiyo, I’ve settled things with my master. If you have no objections, I’ll be staying over for the night. Obviously I won’t waste time sleeping. Your illness will be cured tonight - hopefully. We’ll have to wait for moonrise, though.”

It’d been rather sudden, but I remarked that this was practical since our lessons would be ending soon. Reisen had given me a very self-satisfied smirk.

“Well, that’s what you get when you leave things to me. Trust me tonight also, okay? What are we learning today?”

After our lesson about the importance of asking your patients about their condition (“Ah, I’ve learnt that pretty well,”) we spent the afternoon eating mochi and flinging trivial questions to each other. Reisen had brought a box of them and said she pounded them herself. I asked if she could then call herself a true rabbit youkai.

“You could say that but not exactly, either. You could say that I’m half-half. You’re familiar with Ms. Keine, right? I’m like her, only not exactly. I guess.” Reisen’s answers had lost none of their evasiveness, so I decided to ask about something more direct. I asked about her actual relation to the sisters she had gone on so frequently about.

“I guess they were my mentors. They fed me, taught me about life, and I stayed with them for a while. Like I’ve said, I won’t deny that they were very rough with me, but it was part of everything. And the point with mentors is that you outgrow them and sort of make your own way, right? I’m grateful for them but up to a point. I won’t excuse what they did to me, sometimes, but I’m here now and I’m happier.”

Feeling that she had revealed slightly more than necessary, Reisen had hurriedly cut her answer short. Easy enough with hindsight to point to this as her motivation. Simply, the ghosts of her mentors still haunted her, and I was to become the hapless medium for an exorcism.

The moon dawned earlier that night, bathing the tea room with an eerie glow. In the middle of conversation, Reisen’s ears had stood to their full length.

“It’s time, Chiyo.”

Her smile, like the moon, had been eerily bright. She didn’t care to hide her eyes: they were red and large and aglow. Something in her mien was fae, slim. If she had told me right then that she didn’t eat humans, I wouldn’t have believed her. Drained of the warmth she’d had moments earlier, Reisen turned spectral and uncanny.

I had prepared a futon in the tea room, because fallers like me were safer off lying down. Reisen bustled about the house, turning down the lights, moving furniture out of the room. Her glowing eyes made little smears in my vision, and as the room darkened I could see only those two points of moving light. Finally, Reisen had closed the curtains. The room turned utterly dark.

“Can you see me?”

Rhetorical. I couldn’t see the end of my nose. Reisen’s voice floated, disembodied.

“Good.”

The room flashed blindingly crimson, and I fell. Here my recall becomes regrettably patchwork, Akyuu. You must forgive me.

Dimly, dimly, I saw afternoon light scatter in front of me. I saw the floor of my house realize. Taking tentative steps forward, the sliding door gained definition. Around me, the teaching room breathed into existence, familiar lacquer boxes moved into shape. The blackboard made itself known, and finally the light had slanted in an achingly familiar way. What had I been doing? I tried to remember, but could only recall some hazy task in the mountain. My hands felt dirtied and heavy. I felt exhausted, but my conscience kept me standing.

The sliding door cracked open. My father strode in, mighty and assured, face cast in shadow. Some inner glow spread itself within me, a stomach-full happiness. What was it for, though? I knew trouble was coming.

“Chiyoko. Byakujutsu is not Sojutsu. Sojutusu, not Byakujutsu. Don’t let the Chinese idiots say otherwise. Zhu is zhu!”

I had no idea what he was talking about, as always, and my mind was ready to sleep. I felt my body sag. Had I been crying? Shameful, shameful. The salt-thick taste of snot spread in my mouth. The third time this week I had failed him.

The first blow landed just above my elbow. Inconceivable, inconceivable that a single blow could hurt like that! My arm had gone limp and flown away, replaced by a clumsy mass of pins and needles. Opening my eyes, I saw my father stride back towards the blackboard, his broad shoulders obscuring the view. From where I had crumpled, I saw only him. Did he carry a sword before, truly?

“Chiyoko, I could adopt any boy from the village. Be dignified.”

I remembered this, vaguely. Everything felt slightly angled, but the thrust of the memory was the same. I had something to say to my father, but what was it? Some nonsense about some history that hadn’t happened yet. He stood there in the afternoon dim, sure and unmoving. There was no talking to him. Bitterness welled deep within me. Where was my mother?

The scene tumbled and I awoke as if from a dream. It hadn’t been a pleasant one, and I was covered in sweat. I needed to pee. Slowly, I crawled and opened the sliding door. The hallway seemed impossibly long, dark, and the privy was at the end of it, outside. The moon seemed uncomfortably close, and I felt it through the walls, a peeking curious spying moon. I had to crawl to the privy, that much was obvious. I had to crawl because I heard voices in the teaching room, laughing. My father’s voice was heavy and gravelly, but I heard others. They were laughing at something - the thought of it turned my stomach, because I felt sure they were laughing at me. Pathetic, having to crawl to the privy like a dirty animal. My father didn’t want to be interrupted. The thought terrified me, and slowed my pace. The mocking laughter rang and rang again. Only the thin sliding door stood between me and them, and I felt sure that something creeping and hairy was on the other side. Something that would goggle and loll. I crept like a small fearful thing, veins pumping ice.

Then I was on my back. My father’s heavy presence by my side, his booming voice calling to attention:

“You are stupid, Chiyoko. How did you mistake anything for lily-of-the-valley? Have some of the medicine you mixed.”

The scenery flickered. I was outside, on a shaded mound. The Nameless Hill. Had I been abandoned? I lay there, among the lily-of-the-valley. I no longer felt my arms and legs. I could feel the beating of my heart deep inside my ear, irregular and skipping. A sense of dread so heavy that it crushed my chest. What a way to die, I thought. A billion kilometers from home on an impure hill in the middle of nowhere. Where had Tewi gone? Who was Tewi anyway? Would Kaguya miss me? Who was Kaguya? I have to get back to Master.

My father was by my side again. He was feeding me something, forcefully, and I was vomiting it out. It couldn’t be helped. I floated a bit above myself.

The scene changed - my father was dead.

Somewhere in the mountain where he had insisted on going despite the weather. How did it feel when he died? It was nothing like in the poems. I hadn’t seen his body but all the other villagers seemingly had, so I was a guest at his own funeral. There was triumph, but also fear. I had missed him immediately, for a while the feeling caught in my throat and stopped me from speaking. But now I could speak, what did I want to say?

“I hate pretending. I don’t want your dignity. I miss, miss you. Please come back.”

I remember thinking, Luna. Luna, Reisen. I thought aloud.

My vision went pitch black. I could see two red orbs hovering above me.

“Chiyo, are you okay? I’m sorry. I had to do it. I was in your place once. You hated him, but you couldn’t say.”

I wanted to strangle her. What nonsense had she shown to me? My mind felt cored out, as if someone had poked grubby fingers through my eyeballs and dirtied my brain. All she had to do was let me apologize to him. Instead, the violation was physical: I wanted to vomit and wash my insides.

“I had to suggest some things, but those things were what your father wrote in the journal himself.” Her eyes smeared from one end of the room to the other. I could feel some hesitation in her voice, but mostly righteous emotion. “He was a horrible teacher, right? He poisoned you for getting the mixture wrong. At least the Watatsukis didn’t poison me. Why do you still mourn him now?”

She moved to my side, disappeared. I felt a warm hand squeeze my own, but Reisen’s hand had slithered, slimy and abhorrent, like a reptile’s. She smelled pungent, animal.

“You’ll outgrow your father. You’ll be okay.”

I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing had come out.

“Why are you shouting? Don’t be disturbed. I can hear you just fine. I don’t understand. Why were you so sad for someone like this, even if he was your father? Does death wipe away violence?”

Pity crept into her tone, but it was exact, detached, as if she were beholding something dissected and preserved in fluid.

“For your dignity? Are you pretending again? I guess you realize now. He’s passed, and now you’re free.”

I was crying. A youkai had reached into my mind and shook it violently. When I try to remember my father now he is no longer the loving solid man but the half-beast man, striking at me with the scabbard of his sword. Had he always been a half-beast? I am fairly certain he’d never owned a sword. I hope, I dearly hope, that your power over memories can tell me the answer, Akyuu.

I mercifully fell asleep, or was made to. In the morning, Reisen was nowhere to be found. I resolved to write a tell-all. I wrote to Ms. Yagokoro that ‘agreeable, well-behaved, non-murderous’ did not equal harmless. I wrote that whatever thing her Watatsukis had inflicted on her still had her in pieces. I wrote that she had poisoned the memory of my loving father, forever.

But you know what, Akyuu? I burned the letter. I wrote Ms. Yagokoro a proper, correct letter terminating her assistant Reisen’s tutorship. I still acted with dignity, Akyuu.

The next day I received a box of mochi from Reisen. I threw them away, box and all.

Now that you’ve heard my account in full, I hope that you may be able to judge me more fully. Did I act correctly, in sum? Certainly not. I made many glaring mistakes. But I believe that you will judge me lightly, if only because my loss has been far greater.

The wind is biting, Akyuu. The summer is not upon us yet.

Your friend,  
Chiyoko Miyake.


	9. A Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reisen visits a villager.

######  _Summer, Season 124/2009_

In the aged spring after the plum rains have spent themselves and before the long humid days of summer, the country about the village is delightful. The village sits in the midst of flat rice fields but beyond that the country unrolls itself. The fields become patchy, turning into mosaics of rudely green woods and muted grassland before yielding to rolling hills of mulberry, cedar, cypress - then the true wilderness of the mountain. The river wends herself imperial, cutting across the landscape like a sinuous artery, rushing in what direction she wills; all the crisscrossing reservoirs and streams empty to her, but she herself submits only to an unfathomable outside sea.

In the wooded places on the foothills there are many quiet inlets, cloistered nooks where one can look out across the land and watch farmers weed paddies or villagers make their meandering way through the roads. On a clear day like this, Orino Harukawa could even spot the children playing near the village walls, tinny dots of unpredictable motion. She hopes that Tsuru is one of those dots, once again small and happy. The two-ri trip every few days is a bother, but Orino would take walking the fields over her sister playing near the river, every time.

The wind rises, gusting the gentle dry fragrance of leaves and green wood. Trees whisper around her, dancing their quiet dance; unseen insects begin their chorus anew. Mottled sunshine filters through the moving canopy, strong then fading, then strong again. The light and sound calms her: the woods had been her refuge when the Sight had crowded her thoughts, and now they still shelter. Still, Orino gets up, brushing stray leaves and twigs off her gown. She knows she has to savor the woods. In private, she worries that someday she will become too accustomed to them, that their magic would fade. It is a distant worry.

Making her way down the foothills, Orino sees a familiar figure wind its way across the trail through the paddies. Just in time, she thinks. Soon, her youkai guest would arrive.

The house sits familiar and austere in the noonday light: not large, not small. Orino approaches from the side, marveling at the neat thatching that her husband and neighbors had finished only days before. In the quiet stillness of day everything seems in its place. She enters. The kitchen is dark, and so she sets about lighting the wood-stove, bringing some tea to boil, in case. Something is amiss, though; the inside is gloomier than she remembers. There is a brief moment of worry before she remembers: _The amado need to be taken down._

The rains had been heavy that spring, torrential and unforgiving. The house had gamely held out against the first storms, but then buckled, sagged, gave out. It sprung leaks from a hundred places while the whole family shivered in misery, scarcely able to keep up with repairs. Everything dampened or turned into damp, even their food.

At last, an outsider had to lead the charge: the amado had been Kyosai’s idea, because that was what husbands were apparently for. He returned home one afternoon carrying enormous slats of wood. This was only a month or so into their marriage, so Orino was unsure whether it was polite to ask him his business. She decided that asking would do no harm: she could still return him, anyway.

“I’m making storm shutters for our home. Your father would appreciate it.”

His voice was gruff and sure, clipped. Then, Kyosai had felt like any other man she’d met - solid and vaguely mineral, dense. It would be another month before Orino learned to spot his soft manners, his hesitating concern. It would take her slightly longer still to appreciate them.

When the work began, Orino had involved herself, naturally. Ever since the marriage, her father forbade her from working the fields, but the leaky house had given her plenty of practice. Kyosai wasn’t a natural craftsman (he had come from a family worse off than them) but he was persistent, and she was a quick take. Their amado set was a sequence of learning: the first blocks were badly-cut and shoddily-fitted, but the latest had improvised monkey-latches and catches that slid them into place. Kyosai had insisted on fitting them all, even the earliest, ugliest sidings.

After everything was done, Kyosai had run up the nearest hill to take stock of their creation. The way he’d gone, boyishly romping and puffing, hair all askew, had made Orino’s heart catch in her throat. Once on the hill, he had waved and hollered - joyous. Then he called her name, over and over and over. That was when the marriage took on a texture of realness for her.

Now, however, Orino had to find a way of moving an ungainly, unromantic block of heavy wood. Marriage, she thinks. She’d make it yet.

“Excuse me, Miss Orino. I’ve come to check the medicine.”

Reisen, Reisen would have to do. She hefts the medicine box under her arm and carries the boiling-hot kettle into the reception room. She makes for a harried affect, as if Reisen had caught her in the middle of her chores. Orino slides the door open with her foot.

“Oh, is now a bad time, Miss Orino? Let me handle that box, I’ll be quick.” Orino feels she has overdone it a little. She surrenders the box to Reisen and sets about placing the kettle in a worry-less place.

Both of them sit in temporary positions, Reisen half-crouching over the table, she in a sort of uncomfortable kneel, hand still on the kettle. For a few moments there is only the sound of clattering pills and medicine packets being shuffled around. Orino moves to cut through the awkward stillness.

“You know, you’re free to take off the hat and let those ears catch some air. The season’s already turning hot.”

“Um, thank you, Miss Orino. I’m almost done.” Reisen pauses, and Orino can’t see her face for the massive bamboo hat. The next moment, though, she takes it off, her ears bobbing free, her hands smoothing out and reforming her bursting ponytail. Reisen’s face is paler than Orino remembers, sallower, and her movements stay tense and snappy. About her floats an air of distracted worry. A bill for the medicine is soon written, and money changes hands.

Before Reisen can escape, Orino pours both of them a cup of tea. She settles, making her position more comfortable and permanent, before pushing Reisen her cup. Whatever burden Reisen was carrying, Orino wanted to help.

“You know, you weren’t interrupting anything. I was only thinking of taking down the storm shutters, but that can wait. No need to rush.”

Reisen, sensing herself being drawn to a rest, doesn’t even try to resist. She flashes a brief, wan smile at Orino before collapsing onto her seat, discreetly stretching her legs under the table. Orino follows suit, testing her tea.

“I could help with that, Miss Orino. But please let me stretch my legs a little, first. Thank you very much for the tea.”

Orino nods, and she can feel Reisen’s wandering gaze. The youkai had been absent from her rounds for several months: instead, shorter and more nervous girls delivered the medicine, girls who scampered or went mute at the first sign of conversation. Orino had begun to miss their short updates, and had wondered in passing what a youkai like Reisen would have to say about marriage. Did youkai even marry?

Orino feels a dull poking sensation spread from her temple. When she had had Sight, this was the cue for an unsettling invasion of images. Now, without Sight, she knows that Reisen has just taken a brief glance at her mind. It was a rather rude habit, and Reisen often guessed the source of her moods wrongly, but Orino understood better than most the compulsive pull of such an ability.

Reisen perks up, her ears visibly so. A surprised smile spreads across her features. “I didn’t know, Miss Orino, I truly didn’t. I’m overjoyed. Congratulations on your marriage.” She hesitates for a few moments, but her earlier paleness is gone. Dragging her substantial bag towards the table, Reisen rummages before offering Orino a neatly-made bamboo box.

“It’s very late and very insubstantial, but please accept my gift. It’s some mochi that I made myself.”

It is Orino’s turn to be surprised, and as she thanks Reisen she thinks of ways to tell Kyosai: _This afternoon, a mind-reading rabbit youkai gave us a wedding present - yes, the same one who cured Tsuru_. A nice anecdote bubbling in her mind, Orino finds it easier to ask Reisen to accompany her to take down the amado. She would have something to reward her with, after all: tales of her marriage.

They begin with the reception room, with the latest of the shutters. The work here is simple: Kyosai had grooves made in the floor, so that the shutters needed only to be pushed along a single track into its sheath. Still, the damp has swollen the shutters and so they take breaks, talking between pushes.

She tells Reisen of her austere wedding, the joy of a small sort of love blooming, of finding yourself capable of such a love. She finds that talking about her marriage buoys her, sweetens her small trove of memories, and Reisen makes for a curious companion besides: another young woman, but not quite. Reisen asks the usual questions about circumstance, but poses them at a remove (“Would you have picked him again, if he wasn’t set in stone? If you could choose three times over?” “What if you didn’t have to marry, would you marry?”), as if she struggled to understand that love could bloom from something so arranged and permanent.

“Truth be told, I haven’t put serious thought into it. Excuse me for asking, but does it work?” Reisen pauses, unsure about the propriety of the question. She worries next about its naivete, hastening to add, “I’ve seen it, I’ve read about it. My teachers were married.”

Orino’s answer is definite. “Yes, though you need effort and time. Youkai have lots of both.”

“There’s the problem. I’m fine with both, but that work isn’t actual work. It can disappear.”

Reisen’s expression sours, as if she’d swallowed something bitter. _Relationships_ , Orino thinks. _She’s in the thick of relationship troubles_.

“If you’re having trouble with that, you can ask me for advice.”

Reisen scurries away, bracing her shoulders back against the shutters instead of giving her an immediate answer. Orino realizes that she’s missed. _Not that sort_. Reisen’s evasion, though, tells her that her guess had landed close.

“Oh, it’s not that I’m hurrying to get married. Let’s push this again, Miss Orino.”

They do. The shutter yields, scraping painfully home. Orino makes a note to tell Kyosai about oils, but thinks it’d be faster to drop by the village herself. Kyosai tended to forget about details - he seemed to think that things existed as a natural set, that oil for the shutters would materialize because the shutters themselves existed. It was annoying, but she could handle him.

Next, the living room. Here the shutters here were cruder, home-hewn blocks of wood secured by monkey-latches and other improvised bolts. First, the bolts had to be loosened, taken down, then the blocks themselves had to be lowered. Orino had truthfully objected to them being fitted; she had had fearful flashes of some autumn typhoon or earthquake bringing the heavy shutters down onto Tsuru or her mother, and her going on another mad dash for help. But Kyosai had been insistent, and joked that if it happened then she’d have him for company. She had laughed, only a little convinced.

Now, they were merely difficult to take down. Reisen had taken one look at them before glancing back to her in confusion. “Miss Orino, it’d be impossible for one person to take these down. They look dangerous. Maybe it’d be a good idea to have them remade.”

Orino feels a stir of vindication, but then other balances had been on her mind when she’d agreed with Kyosai. What harm could there be in telling that to a youkai?

“Yes, they were my husband’s idea. I didn’t agree completely, but here we are.” She tells Reisen about the making of the amado, in broad strokes.

Reisen’s ears twitch and crumple. The wan smile flashes back on her face, and she speaks in a low, collusive tone: “Ah, marriage.”

Had she thrown shade over her own marriage, and so soon? No, it’s only honesty, Orino tells herself. If the ‘work’ that Reisen feared doing was compromise, then it was her place to tell her that marriage was made of it, and so she had better arm herself with deep reserves of modesty and patience.

“Leave things to me, Miss Orino. Would you mind closing your eyes a while? It’s a formality, since you already know who I am. But still.”

Orino readily agrees and closes her eyes. She wonders what youkai magic Reisen is working on the shutters - perhaps telekinesis through the eyes, or teleportation - and imagines how such abilities would help with housework. Her days were now spent in countless small revolutions: the kitchen, the living room, the kitchen, outside for washing, the kitchen… her hours were as long as they’d been in the fields, and more mind-numbing. If she could light the wood-stove with a glance, prepare meals without using her arms, she would.

“Is Miss Tsuru doing fine? I thought I saw her with Miss Keine the other day.”

Orino nods, blindly. Tsuru, at least, was unequivocally in a better place. “Miss Kamishirasawa came here herself to ask for Tsuru. She’s been at the temple school since, oh, Yayoi or so.” Something occurs to her then. “That couldn’t have been Lady Yagokoro’s doing, could it?”

There is a pause, then a series of snaps as the bolts are loosened. “Actually, that was me. I only told Miss Keine to keep Miss Tsuru in mind. I guess she went above and beyond.”

“Thank you, truly, Reisen. She’s much happier and out of danger.” Orino omits the shouting matches between her and her father about the school fee, because Tsuru is worth so much more than that. “I’d never have guessed that a youkai would go so far to help.”

Another silence, this one a little sullen.

“I’m closer to what Miss Keine is, rather than some other youkai. If you please, I’d like you to keep that in mind, especially if you meet those others. I’m only here to do my work. You can open your eyes now, Miss Orino.”

The shutters were neatly stacked in a corner, the latches sorted from smallest to largest. Golden afternoon light was now streaming through the high rafters, motes of dust swirling lazily in the air. In the sudden light Reisen appears slight and pale again, her flat smile plastered on.

Orino decides to be direct. Asking would do no harm. “What’s wrong? You’re pale.”

Reisen’s eyes flicker, but she fans the air with measured nonchalance. “Learning difficulties, Miss Orino. It’ll pass. Is that all of the shutters?”

Orino shrugs, internally. If Reisen was determined to keep her problems close to her chest then she had no say. She’d settle for making her a little more comfortable in the meantime.

“There’s a set in the backroom, but they’re very heavy. I’d rather wait for my husband, so let’s finish our tea.”

Reisen gives her a searching look, and she feels her mind being peeked at again. Orino looks up and is stricken by an odd shame, a scarlet warmth spreading its petals inside her. She feels it now: Reisen’s taut wariness, as if she were a child freshly daunted by an encounter with a boiling kettle. _She thinks I’m lying_.

Orino pivots towards the backroom, Reisen closely following from behind. Over their encounters, the map of borders that made Reisen had revealed itself to her, and she didn’t care for this new habit of suspicion. Reisen had always been reticent but never mistrustful; that had been Orino’s role, the (rightfully) cautious human who was now less so. Hadn’t she just talked about her marriage, in confidence? Whatever was clouding Reisen’s mind was also planting new jagged brambles along her bounds.

“Well, here’s the backroom.”

The backroom was where they had kept their clutch of silkworms. The season having ended in spring, the room was now steeped in must. It had been Tsuru’s task to clean the room, and though she did the sweeping and washing with painstaking effort, she had missed the order of things: she’d simply left things where her attention gave out. Rearing trays were sloughed about haphazardly; in one corner, the breeding racks had fallen, forgotten, and dried cocoons littered the floor from an upturned rack. Tsuru was getting there, but not there yet. The storm shutters fixed there had been their earliest constructs, unsubtle wedges of ugly wood already rotting from the damp. More barricades than shutters, they spanned the length of the room, lashed to the house’s supports by thick coils of rope.

Echoes of Kyosai’s bustle marked the room. She sees him hauling the wood, measuring with his elbow, cutting with borrowed tools. She sees herself tying the slabs, dimly happy with the work. The first act of their marriage, undertaken with great tentativeness and budding romance - seeing it now unspooling and bare causes an unfamiliar ache to rise in Orino’s chest, on top of that strange guilt. She wonders about her memories of him a year from now, ten years from now: would they also leach, turn mundane with every telling?

She feels suddenly exposed, feels that she has told and shown Reisen too much.

Reisen senses this, she must. She hesitates at the threshold of the room, her ears turning nervous little circles. Her face rumples with embarrassment as she tries to ignore the mess of the room, the secret weakness.

Orino steps inside and she follows, careful. “The hardest part. Let’s get to work, Reisen.”

Reisen inspects the barricade, gingerly running her fingers over the coils of rope. “Should we cut the ropes, Miss Orino? Would you have a knife, a tool?”

“Yes, and no, my husband took the ax.”

“Please turn around, Miss Orino. You might hear loud sounds.”

She turns, crouching to inspect a cocoon. Kyosai would have used it to feed the fish in the communal pond, or even eaten it himself. He was charmingly practical at times.

“ _Bang._ ”

Two loud cracks sound, like stone hitting stone. Orino catches a whiff of something burning, something like spent matches.

“Okay, Miss Orino. I think this will do.”

The thick ropes have been reduced to ash, the entire construct now leaning dangerously. Orino moves to support the barricade, to prevent it from falling over them both, before realizing that most of the slabs of wood have completely disappeared. Dusty light falls into the room from the space where the shutters once were. In the far distance, Orino catches the outline of the mountain.

“Should I make some more space?” Reisen, the sleeves on her _happi_ coat rolled up, pointed towards the remains of the shutters. Smoke coils from the tip of her index finger, and before Orino can object, Reisen takes another peek into her mind.

“I need the rest for - firewood, Reisen. Thank you.” Orino’s lie is blatant: the soggy wood would only smoke and smoke without igniting, but it is all she can say. The ache in her chest curdles into something protective, and she finds herself gently lowering, cradling the remaining shutters. She thinks, inanely, _Now I won’t have to worry about these crushing anyone anymore_.

Reisen is soon beside her, easing the larger blocks down. The remaining lengths of wood are wordlessly arranged, and the rest of the work is completed in similar silence. It is Reisen who breaks it this time, whispering as they return to the reception room.

“I feel like I should apologize. I feel out of sorts today.”

Orino sighs. If Reisen hadn’t insisted, if she’d just let Kyosai take down the shutters - in fact, her caution had been her mistake: she couldn’t decide between wanting to help and being needlessly suspicious. And if she’d just been frank, from the start.

Here Orino stops, forces herself to: hadn’t she been the capricious one? Reisen had simply taken down the amado with her. At the end of the day it was she who worried her marriage into all things, saw portents where there were none. And if she had revealed too much already, wouldn’t her anger only reveal more, confirm it?

“You’ve been a great help, and those shutters were due, anyway.” That was mostly true. She and Kyosai could make new, less worrisome ones. And with just as much feeling. Reisen looks back at her, unconvinced, and so Orino braces for the dull poke - but it never comes.

The reception room glows golden in the setting light, and both settle to finish their cold tea. Everything seems in its place. Reisen retrieves her hat, and for several minutes Orino admires her intricate method of fitting ears and hair into it. Finally, she rises, drags her pack, shrugs it onto her shoulder. Orino accompanies her to the door.

She is opening it when Reisen asks, “Miss Orino, may I ask a private question?”

“Go on.”

“Why would you forgive your husband?” It was a truly odd question, and Orino had to fish around for context. Why wouldn’t she, if he asked for forgiveness? But Reisen eventually added, “If he made something dangerous, like the shutters in the backroom, what would it take for you to forgive him?”

Orino reflects a little, before saying, “It would take him promising to do a better job. We’d do it together, so it’d take very little, for me.”

Her answer seemed to deflate Reisen. “What if he was lying, if he told you that the shutters were safe but actually, they weren’t? Would it take more to forgive him?”

Orino feels Reisen circling around her, too afraid to ask her actual question. “Yes, but not a lot more. I’d leave him alone for some time, because he lied to me, but if he truly apologizes, it’s done.”

Reisen sighs, clearly unsatisfied by her answers. She takes a different tack, “This sounds stupid, but would there be a formal way of asking forgiveness? A formal time? What gifts would you need?”

 _You’re overthinking it, Reisen_. “Why don’t you ask the person straight? Did you scorn him? If you did, then he gets to decide.”

“I can’t. I can’t. They’re too angry and I’ve done something they aren’t willing to let go.” Reisen’s voice is sad, but something pettish creeps in. “They won’t let themselves get it. I’m glad that not all people are like them. Like you, Miss Orino.” At this, Reisen smiles, but it is a peevish smile.

Orino opens the door. A summer wind blows in, dry and heavy.

“I’m not special, Reisen. You did something kind, so I’m kind. You’ve been inside my mind a few times, you should know.”

Reisen steps out into the afternoon, clutching her bamboo hat tight. “Oh, so you know about that too, Miss Orino? I’m glad that people can accept that. So it’s the same. You try, so I’ll keep trying, as well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was the epilogue to A Student of the Art and this series as a whole! I hope you've enjoyed it.


End file.
